


omi makes a drink

by a3hihi (henriddas_quill)



Category: A3! (Anime), A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Canon, Rambling, death mention, mentioned vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29465460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henriddas_quill/pseuds/a3hihi
Summary: It’s four in the morning, and Nachi’s still gone.
Relationships: Fushimi Omi & Nachi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	omi makes a drink

It’s four in the morning, and Nachi’s still gone. 

Omi can’t see. His shirt sticks to the sweat on his back, yet he can’t bring himself to yank it off. Sitting up, Omi feels the heat glue him to his bed and it makes him want to retch. 

The whirr of fan blades sound too loud to him, their spinning scratching at his ears. So he peels the blankets off him, musters the strength to get up and turns the fan off. Flips the lights on. 

They’re dimmer than the ones in the hospital. He’s been back home from the intensive care unit for two days and he doesn’t miss it there. The lights blinded him and the cold shocked him anyway.

He runs to the kitchen and the dust on the floor clings to his soles. Omi realizes he's heaving. The curtains are drawn, television still buzzing. 

Something on his shoulder burns. The doctors called it some kind of rash, pointing to his chest, legs, other parts he forgot to count. They’d treated his wounds, sure, but if the whispers he’d eavesdropped on were right, he’d take a while to recover from them.

He grabs the drawer handle, left arm still weak, and barely moves the drawer out enough to take a spoon. Useless. So this is what’s left of him, after physical therapy to get his stupid joints to work, speech therapy to get him to __swallow__ , evaluations on how his head was doing, how his burns were doing.

__He’s hurt__ , he remembers the nurses telling him. Coupled with promises that he’d be alright, with enough time, enough care. 

He’s usually the one saying that to his brothers. Kai scrapes his knee while running, and Omi patches him up, mixes him some juice. Gaku breaks his nose in a match at the boxing ring and Omi gets him ice packs. Dad falls and sprains his wrist and Omi helps him back up. Omi’s the one to have a handle on things. 

Omi laughs at that, but feels nothing behind it.

He’ll have to help Dad sweep the house tomorrow. Help him wipe the windows. Help Dad do it until Omi’s well enough to do it himself again. That couldn’t possibly be what they were thinking, so why did it feel that way? Why did he have to do everything around here? Anyone could do that, he thinks. But no one else can. 

He didn’t know he could feel like this. Part of him itches to claw at this throat. Or scream it hoarse. 

Part of him itches to hit something. A look at the clock says it’s ten minutes past four. He makes noise now and the whole house will ask him about it. Omi sees that Dad left the kettle on again, so he heats some milk. 

Ever since bringing him back from the hospital, Dad’s been sleeping lightly. His door’s half open like he’s listening, checking in on everyone. But Omi knows he’s dead asleep. If either of his brothers came out right now, he knew he’d let his eyes glaze over and mouth tighten and he’d even offer to make them something. Omi feels himself shift his weight, settling on the countertops. He bets he can’t even hold a knife properly at this point. He’s pathetic. 

Something about swaying here in the kitchen in the dark makes Omi think about his family, like he always does, and he bites down the urge to roll his eyes. He's not surprised in the slightest. A tiny, selfish part of him, one he would choke, wanted them to worry. They probably did, but with everything that’s happened, with him always causing trouble for them, could they afford to worry?

Did he want to hurt them? 

He couldn’t live with himself if he did.

Hurting people other ways, beating them in fights, was always easy. But it wasn’t fun anymore. It was morbid now, to think about that.

The lights are making him blink too hard again. Omi dims them down. He tries to keep his wrist stable, pours milk into a glass without spilling most of it. Mixes in honey.

He was young, he still is, and he wishes he didn’t feel so stupid when he shouldn’t be. He wishes he didn’t feel so tired.

He wishes he could slip out of class and into the alleys again. Throw a punch or three, blow off steam. Start fights on the ground and chase with his bike. Earn attention, get wasted, feel alive with the family he’d chosen. Pour his heart out to them on how he didn’t have plans for the future. He’d come home, do what Mom might’ve done, sleep, repeat. No one would bat an eye. Out there he couldn’t bother his teachers, couldn’t bother his brothers and Dad. Out there the Wolves were by his side. And no one had his back like Nachi did.

Now, Nachi had plans. He said something about acting, didn’t he? They’d been at each other’s houses, knew what the other thought in and out of fights, hell, they’d known each other’s fears before they started this gang and Omi can’t remember one detail?

Omi’s head throbs, thinking that, and his heart pinches too. The honey’s not settling in like it should and Omi has trouble mixing it right. 

On that day he felt too much. He remembers shock, grief, helplessness. He remembers his head swimming in rage like it was smoke. It suffocated him. He could've died on the spot if he didn’t run back home, no where else to go, just to get stuck in the hospital. Worrying everyone. And yet he couldn’t find it in himself to kill anyone on that street. He doubts it’s different for anyone else he’d met in the alleys. But he left people, kids like him, bruised, bleeding on the asphalt. He made a mess. He didn’t wanna hurt people, not that badly. But after what happened to them, what was he supposed to do?

His shoulders are heavy. His whole body could give out any second now.

Omi can't breathe. 

He takes the glass. The heat of it scalds his fingers, but he tips it to his mouth and glugs the milk down anyway. The rage boiling in him is dizzying. He wishes he could feel anything different from how he was feeling now. 

He could push by his family asking him to stop, to rest. It’d be easy to drown himself in cooking again, in doing chores everyday. It’s not like he can skip class anymore. Omi feels tears sting his eyes and he blinks them away, feels his breath shorten. He could sob over the sink or stick an ice cube in his mouth. He can’t remember what else the nurses told him to do.

Omi washes his glass. The water freezes his fingers. The lights are still dim as he limps back to bed. In the morning he’d have to make lunch. Dad would scold him again not to help, but Omi knew how to fix the stove if the knobs shook. And he could set the table faster. They needed to eat. Omi swallows and his throat feels like glass. 

The pillow’s hot and flat when Omi falls on it. He leaves the blankets off. Throws a forearm on his eyes and tries, tries his hardest, to keep his breathing even. He doesn’t want anyone waking up because of him. 

It’s five in the morning now, and Nachi’s still gone, so Omi rests.


End file.
